I’ve heard for years from people outside of Athens that Georgia fans feel entitled to win. I’ve never been sure how I felt about that sentiment. But the knee jerk reactions to the Jim Chaney hire help me understand that viewpoint a little easier. Did people really think that Kirby Smart would just read the Dawgvent or Twitter for his list of candidates?
Is bringing the long term assistant a bit underwhelming? Sure. I guess. But what did we really expect? It’s situations like these - where we have days to watch plane logs and ruminate and pontificate and speculate - that make it easy to lose perspective. I think Smart wanted Enos and when that didn’t happen, he zeroed in on his next couple choices.
Chaney’s offenses may not jump to the forefront when you’ve been doing nothing but reading the rumor mill for a week. But I come back around to these two points:
1) The addition of Sam Pittman makes the Chaney hire much easier to understand. Georgia is about to get much bigger and more physical along the offensive front. These two coaches have worked well together at Tennessee briefly and then especially at Arkansas. They’ll do much greater things than Schottenheimer and Sale were (not) able to do this past season.
2) Everyone that is so quick to point to Pittsburgh being ranked just below Georgia in total offense this season...well, they have a point. But Chaney also has a track record for getting the most out of his players at key times. Jonathan Crompton comes to mind (all too easily). And so does Arkansas’ two 1000 yard rushers in 2014.
And you know, next season he’s going to have his hands full breaking in a young quarterback (most likely) while getting the most he can out of his backfield. In that frame, the Chaney hire makes perfect sense to me.
